I Miss You Already
by dreamarcher
Summary: "'Em sẽ nhớ anh,' Artemis says plainly to Wally's retreating figure.


**Author's Note: I would greatly appreciate it if you took a little extra time to review. While I am totally overjoyed when someone reads it, constructive criticism or just encouragement is a real treasure. It also helps me keep writing.**

**Thank you. **

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"Em sẽ nhớ anh," Artemis says plainly to Wally's retreating figure.

"What?" He stops in his tracks, pivoting on his heels to face Artemis again.

"Nothing," she reiterates firmly, turning away before she meets his eyes. She does not wipe away tears as she goes back inside. She does not tell herself _It's only a seventy-two hour stakeout; he's done worse. I've done worse._ She definitely does not worry every time she passes the flower he left her along with memories of breezes tickling her hair. She does, eventually, throw away his gift with unbridled ferocity. It's his fault, if he gets hurt. She shouldn't worry.

When he comes back, Artemis almost knocks him down with a fiercely relieved embrace. She almost tells him that she's been so _worried_, that he will never do something like that again— who knows what could have happened to him without her to keep an eye on him— she almost clutches him in her arms and promises him but mostly herself that she's coming with him next time; that it was his fault that she didn't get any sleep.

Instead, when she sees him, she bites her lower lip and fixes him with an insufferable stare. His cheek is cut. Her fingers tremble slightly with the urge to reach up and brush the blood away. "Welcome back." Her voice is low, raspy, cool.

Then she turns, her ponytail whipping around her shoulder—and he grabs her arm, pulling her back. Their eyes lock. "What did you say?" he demands, his green eyes bright and searching.

Artemis fluctuates, her mouth opening and closing, then opening again. She shakes her head to clear it and enunciates sharply, "I said, _welcome back_."

"When I left," he delineates, gentler this time. His grip loosens into a soft hold. His stare is intense; holding her in place, locking her feet to the ground. "It was Vietnamese. Right?"

Artemis stares back at him. "Just— just… be_ safe_, that's all." _I wanted you to forget that. Why couldn't you have forgotten?_ She keeps her arm as still as possible, but she feels the blood (or adrenaline) pumping through her veins.

Wally looks at her with such a serious expression that Artemis wants to yank away and shake him and shout _laugh,_ _Wally, laugh, because as annoying as it is, it's_ necessary. But she doesn't. And he doesn't laugh. She stares at his hovering eyelashes and down; where his freckles spray out lightly against his skin. His lips look soft, his neck sculpted, his flickering pulse at the base of his throat. Her eyes are drowning in his emerald ones, but she doesn't want to save herself. Her throat closes up and it feels like something's stuck in it, which isn't right— snarky words always roll out without any effort, especially with _Wally_.

They are too close. Too close is not close enough, thinks Artemis numbly.

And then he's gone, before she can choke out what she meant to say, what she really said. His touch is gone. His words are blurred; lost in the wind: "I'm safe, now."

_I missed you._

She returns to her room on fluttering, light feet. It was a touch, just a simple touch, but her heart beat with an uneven rhythm. It was just Wally, she repeats to herself, just Wally.

"You don't fool me," he tells her a week after the stakeout, drumming his fingers on the counter of her run-down kitchen. She curls her lip at him, shoveling the excess phở noodles into its container. They had a late-night mission, courtesy of Batman. It started raining as soon as they jailed the last two thugs, and Wally had been complaining about being wet and having to trudge all the way to the zeta tubes back to Happy Harbor from Gotham with his bruised ribcage from a slippery fall, so she, being the hospitable person she is, told him to get in her house or shut the hell up. He didn't say much after that.

"What are you talking about," Artemis grounds out, picking up a spoon and stirring the pot of noodles.

"'Be safe' in Vietnamese is _được an toàn_," he replies, horribly mangling the language in his execution of the words. Artemis freezes. "And whatever you said didn't sound like that."

The spoon she was holding clatters against the side of the metal pot. She whisks it up quickly, keeping her back turned to the speedster. "I hope not," she ripostes. "Your accent is terrible." If her voice shakes, it's not because she's afraid.

"Artemis, seriously."

She swallows, collecting herself, and stirs furiously at the bubbling soup. "That was a long time ago, can we forget about that?"

"It was a week ago, Artemis," Wally says. "Uhhh, by my standards, that's not too long ago." He chuckles, but there's something nervous about it. Artemis wants to kill him with a wooden spoon.

"Okay!" Artemis says, too loudly. "I didn't tell you to be safe. I lied. Sue me." Her mind races. Say anything, anything. What did she say in Vietnamese? _Thanks for the flower. Don't forget to clean your goggles before you leave. Say hi to Barry for me._ _Souvenir._ She could have said all of those, any of those.

"Then…" Wally prompts, his voice sounding closer.

The words come out, tripping over each other in their rush to escape her mouth. "I said that I would miss you." It was over in a heartbeat.

Whatever happened after was like shattering glass or a nuclear bomb or an unfolding flower or a whisper of breath and wind. Artemis's eyes flutter closed and she grips the spoon with a shaking clench. She can hear his breath catch, deep in his throat.

He takes her shoulders and spins her around to face him. "Well, I did," he says matter-of-factly and then he's kissing her. His lips are soft and sweet and Artemis cannot feel the earth under her feet; the cracked tile of their fourth-story apartment floor. He strokes her hair at the back of her head and trails his fingers through the silky strands that have only just dried from the rain and down to the small of her back. She encircles his shoulders with her arms and clenches the back of his uniform, yellow spandex stretching under her fingers.

When they part, the space between them is too far. Artemis breathes in and out, her ragged breaths mingling in turn with his. "Don't do that, Wally."

Sometimes flashes across his freckled face, something like hurt or shock or remorse.

"Don't _do _that, Kid," she says with more vehemence. "I hate you, remember?" Her fingers clench around nothing. "And you hate me." She focuses her gaze on a blemish spotting the tile floor. It's so much simpler that way._ I love to hate you._

His forehead crinkles and he laughs. It's sweet to Artemis's ears, but she still wants to kill him. "Oh, Arty… I don't—"

"Okay, do it." She grabs the collar of his uniform. His startled green eyes lock with her gray ones. "You can do it," she tells him and when he fails to carry out the action in less than two seconds, Artemis brings his mouth to hers on her own.

She smiles against the kiss and breathes in the smell of bonfires and summer rain.

When he leaves, it's not too early in the morning, and she does not brush his freckled cheek with the back of her hand affectionately. Artemis Crock does not replay the scene last night inside her head on repeat, over and over again until her muscles hurt from smiling for so long. She definitely does not sit on the musty couch, staring at where he had been eating slightly overcooked phở with her at one in the morning. Of course she does not feel warm inside.

She does look out of her bedroom window in the direction the zeta tubes that carried him away that morning and whisper, "Đừng làm cho tôi sai, Kid. Tôi ghét bạn quá. Không quên."

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Translations:

_Em sẽ nhớ anh._ I'll miss you.

_Đừng làm cho tôi sai, Kid. Tôi ghét bạn quá. Không quên._ Don't get me wrong, Kid. I hate you, too. Don't forget.

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**Author's Note: Special thanks to Google Translate! I don't know what I would do without you (probably use another translator ahem what?).**


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